For several weeks now a dedicated group of Madshrimps forum members have been busy overclocking the MSI hardware they received from MSI Europe. They got a MSI P35 Platinum motherboard and MSI HD3850 512Mb video card which they used to push their system to the limits.

Jip started out with an air cooled system and set 2nd place benchmarks early at the start. Oneyedk had an advantage in Wprime with this Quad Core CPU but his lower clocks left him in 3rd place in Cinebench and 3DMark03. Blind set out as the favorite with his 65L of LN2 prepped to cool down his gear; he grabbed 1st spots early on in the contest.

OneyeDK threw in the hat last week when he had to leave on holiday, leaving Blind and Jip to fight it out amongst them. Blind managed to kill his VGA card leaving him at an eternal second place in the 3DMark03 test; while Jip was having difficulties overclocking his CPU high enough to match Blind's 2D benchmark scores.

Blind told Jip he was prepping his LN2 for his final test run... Jip turned to his colleague overclocker Pt1t for some help; cooled down by a cascade Phase Change JIP's CPU soared high enough to beat Blind's 2D scores; this put Jip in the lead Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday was the last day of the contest and Blind had 24 left to prove his LN2 cooling skills; but as with everything done hastly, bad luck is most likely to strike when it's least expected or wanted. Without 3D he had to focus on Wprime32M and Cinebench; as the hours went by the tension rose as Jip continued posting questions, asking for updates on Blind scores.

Slightly before midnight Jip got confirmation that Blind did not succeed to beat his scores; Jip & Pt1t will be going to the Netherlands, speak Dutch, and represent Belgium in the EU finals

Congratulations! Jip & Pt1t will be receiving a brand new MSI P45 motherboard, CPU , MEMORY and PSU to go with it so they can practice their voltmods and overclock skills, discover the BIOS, tweak their custom chipset cooling, and prepare for the finals in August in Amsterdam where the two benchmarks used are Wprime 32M and Cinebench; some high end containers and mucho LN2 will come in useful !